OA Scotland Group Meeting – 5th September 2016, University of Stirling

The first meeting of the Open Access Scotland group took place on Monday 5th September 2016 at the University of Stirling. The meeting was attended by over 30 representatives of Scottish HE institutions, government departments, funders, and public sector stakeholders. The meeting included three discussions:

Open Access Compliance Reporting for REF (Valerie McCutcheon, University of Glasgow)

RCUK Open Access Reporting Requirements and Challenges (Jackie Proven, University of St Andrews)

Format of the OA Scotland Group

The day also included an open discussion on how the group could best operate in future. It was agreed that:

The group should provide a voice for open access in Scotland, allow the sharing of best practice, facilitate opportunities for networking between stakeholders, and lobby on behalf of Scottish institutions.

The group should be informal and encompass a wide remit on open access, including but not exclusive to, research, data, education, and special interest groups such as archives and special collections.

The group will meet twice a year at various host locations across the country. Robert Gordon University, Glasgow School of Art, University of the West of Scotland, Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Edinburgh offered to host future meetings.

A Jiscmail list will be created and will be open to all interested parties and stakeholders. Valerie McCutcheon (UofG), Nicola Simonson (GSA) and Toby Hanning (GCU) volunteered to administer this list.

The group will create a web page to host minutes of past meetings and promote future meetings, and to provide contact details and any other information relating to the group.

Areas for Further Collaboration

The group agreed that they would like to link with a variety of external stakeholders including Jisc, UKCoRR, CASRAI and ARMA. It was also agreed that public engagement should be a high priority for the group.

Several specific offers were made during the course of the meeting:

Jisc offered to assist in the creation of a mailing list for the group

Jisc volunteered to present at a future meeting on their projects and tools relating to open access

Valerie McCutcheon offered to represent the group’s views at the newly formed RCUK Open Access Practitioners Group

Jackie Proven and Valerie McCutcheon offered to represent the group’s views at the upcoming Wellcome Trust meeting in London.

Topics for Future Meetings

The group also looked at areas for future discussion and collaboration. Please add a comment below this post if you are able to lead a session on any of the following topics or if you have any other areas of interest relating to open access:

REF exception reporting, focusing on comparing the results at different institutions

Answering common questions from HEFCE REF policy and creating standard definitions for all institutions to follow